Facepaint, Flashcards, Fashawna

 

 

 

My mom texted me this morning to check in. It’s been a few days since I’ve posted. I’ve been living with Erika who moves at a different speed. Photographing her is harder than wildlife, she’s faster and less predictable. She responds to snacks, but is otherwise unconcerned with anything beyond the focus of her current interest. Up late, out early, 5^th gear, 20,000 leagues of rest; there is no time for recording life… it’s happening right now, you fool.

She’s also busy studying and has a remarkable knack for finishing a month’s worth of work in around 27hours. This morning I was following suit. I was making some Thai language flash cards. I’ve wanted to make them for a while but haven’t stumbled upon the card stock... until breakfast this morning.

One of the restaurants down the street is an unbelievably hot spot. They put out well over 100 orders to grab drivers alone every hour. So, with all the digital orders coming in, they ask walk-in customers to write their orders down. Each table has a stack of 3x5 cards; in addition to their primary function kids draw on them and some fine works make a wall in the dining area. I make my self a flash card that says “study card” in Thai on the front and English on the back. I grab a stack and pluck 30bhat from my change sack. I approach the counter to try and ask to buy a stack of cards and demonstrate why.

Like I said, they’re absurdly busy: open air kitchen, busy street corner, order numbers tossed across flat-tops, bags tied and tossed stacked with banded receipts sorted meticulously to send drivers and servers onward in quiet ballet. I’ve looked for cards for weeks with no luck and here they are in casual bounty, but I feel like I’m about to shove my foot in a cotton gin bothering these folks. The line chef who approaches me to take what he thinks is my order is beyond confused, he gives up almost immediately and calls the guy they call to deal with idiots. That guy comes and is also confused. I’ve left my cell at the hotel so I can’t even use Google for help. I show him my notebook with its juvenile loops of Thai numbers, consonants and vowels, then I show him the card, Thai on the front, English on the back “Study Card”. I show him the money, and a stack of cards and mime a trade. He takes the money, still confused and goes back to his work. I’m turning to leave when he sets down his cleaver, claps his hands and gives what must be a universal exclamation of understanding because it seems to me to be absolutely unmistakable. He explains to me and the nearby employees in Thai that he understands what I’m doing now, and he starts asking me questions I don’t understand. He asks again, and now I get to look hopelessly confused for him, a good trade. He runs off, and comes back with a stack five times the size of the one I paid for and puts it in my hand. We all get to enjoy this moment of understanding together and I get a lifetime supply of flash cards. It was a nice moment.

I was sitting on the deck of my hotel splitting the flash cards in half to make them easier to pocket when my mom texted, “are you ok?” I texted back and it reminded me of a moment from childhood. Around second grade our backyard had a jungle gym the size of a skyscraper built by my father. I learned recently watching home movies that it was roughly the size that standard lumber is sold in, but it felt like a dominant force in the neighborhood at the time. I climbed it one afternoon after school with a zippered pouch and some colored construction paper and proceeded to start tearing, balling and stuffing the paper into my pouch. Somehow (I imagine through binoculars) my mom saw her child tearing and balling paper ritualistically in the yard and came to investigate with some concern. “Are you ok?”

I didn’t know what to say because I was in fact, preparing an arsenal of assault paper to annoy a girl I really liked in class tomorrow. I couldn’t have realized at the time how this event was foreshadowing what would be an absolute lifetime of confused, frustrated and often all-consuming absurdity that I would generate at women I liked. I certainly couldn’t tell my mom that I was preparing a blitzkrieg for Luanne Fashawna. So, not having a suitable explanation for what I instantly realized was going to be unexplainable, I just pretended like everything was fine and that this was a perfectly normal behavior for 4pm on a Tuesday; a calm pre-dinner paper tearing session. No problem.

Although we were both speaking the same language there was no moment of clarity that day. Eventually mom conceded, wearily, that I was not in the midst of a crisis and descended from the jungle gym balcony disappearing into the clouds below. Eventually I came to dinner and we spoke of other things.

So here I am again, on a high platform this time on the other side of the world tearing up paper when my mom checks in, “Are you ok?” And I am. I’m making flash cards. I actually can’t imagine a better benchmark for health and wellness than the creation of flashcards. Unwell people don’t make flashcards. I’m really pretty good, and that’s exactly what I say. “I’m alive and well! I’m making flashcards.” But although we’re again speaking the same language, for a guy who’s spent 20 some years unsure that any particular day was worth waking up for and a mom who knows that: there is an understanding that can’t be reached in this text exchange alone. For a moment at the restaurant we were all afforded this joyful gift of understanding each other, joyful because we recognized why that understanding mattered. I was learning the language, they were helping me by giving me cards. We were in this little problem together and chose to see it through, and were then rewarded with the satisfaction of that effort. It made me wonder why that kind of quality of understanding is so often denied parents and children. We are, after all, in this little problem together, although with a great deal more amplitude and frequency. It seems like a good portion of our existence, despite uncommon closeness remains mysterious to each other. What we want seems inexpressible. What we’re thinking and feeling seems incomprehensible. We are often leaving each other confused with skyscrapers between us.  

I was ok when she texted. I’m ok right now. But my brain is still my brain and is itself mostly incomprehensible to me; it seems unreasonably bent on torment. This trip has helped reset the circumstantial upheavals of this epoch in my life, but whatever twisted metals travel my softest tissues still shred them dispassionately. Maybe we’re all walking around like this; irreconcilably strange and tormented wearing carefully cast masks. Parents, children and sometimes spouses are the ones who see that private masking ritual most regularly, compounding our own confusion of what it is to be alive and feeling things. How much of this can actually be understood? What moments of clarity are even possible between us; inside us? What’s left may only be the question that has no real answer, “are you ok?” And the insistent feeling as a good parent (or a spouse, or a child, or a sibling, or a person we've decided fits the description without proper titles) that we should ask it anyway, and always. So thanks Mom, yes today I’m making flashcards and I’m ok; whatever that means and for however long it will last. I have no better explanation than that.

 

Then again… all I really wanted at the restaurant was some card stock. I don’t know that I could have explained bombarding Luanne Fashawna any more clearly to line cooks, certainly not Luanne, my mom, or anyone at all. We’re probably all in this experience alone.

Maybe something more.